diff --git a/apis/r/DESCRIPTION b/apis/r/DESCRIPTION
index 51edbe6c6a..83cae8190c 100644
--- a/apis/r/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/apis/r/DESCRIPTION
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ Description: Interface for working with 'TileDB'-based Stack of Matrices,
     like those commonly used for single cell data analysis. It is documented at
     <https://github.com/single-cell-data>; a formal specification available is at
     <https://github.com/single-cell-data/SOMA/blob/main/abstract_specification.md>.
-Version: 1.6.99.2
+Version: 1.7.0
 Authors@R: c(
     person(given = "Aaron", family = "Wolen",
            role = c("cre", "aut"), email = "aaron@tiledb.com",
diff --git a/apis/r/NEWS.md b/apis/r/NEWS.md
index 725e3ee4f0..f36692860b 100644
--- a/apis/r/NEWS.md
+++ b/apis/r/NEWS.md
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-# Develop
+# 1.7.0
 
 ## Changes